Articles » Introductory

Some things in nature are so unexpected that our reaction can only be one of wonder or amazement. Did you know that some plants, innocent in appearance, but vicious in character, lurk in ponds throughout the world? These plants attract, catch and eat aquatic insects, water fleas and young tadpoles, fish fry, tiny worms and very young insect larvae including mosquito wrigglers. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have followed the adventures of scientists who collect fossils for a living, you may have noticed that travel to distant lands is often part of their profession. One such account by Derek Ager, published posthumously in 1993 (The New Catastrophism.Cambridge University Press) contains insights garnered from his travels and experiences during the course of a long career in palaeontology. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a scary place out there. Dangerous rays and strange bodies make deep space a good place to avoid. The Hubble Space Telescope (functioning since late 1993), and other observatory satellites like the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory or CGRO (launched April 5, 1991), and Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer or XTE (launched December 30, 1995) and Beppo-SAX (launched April 20, 1996), have provided us with an information overload when it comes to the wonders of space. If each type of body in space, such as stars and galaxies, functioned in predictable ways, then astronomers might have a pretty good grasp on what is going on out there. Recent observations made with these fancy new observatories however, have revealed a plethora of unexpected and unexplained phenomena. Vast numbers of objects which should act in similar ways, all seem to be doing their own thing. Read the rest of this entry »

History is full of sad stories. Nobody needs to tell us that. Nevertheless many tragic events have been obscured by the mists of time. It sometimes seems that we scarcely know or care any more about the crusades, European wars or treaties during the Middle Ages or events before or after that time. Eighty years ago however, the assassination of the Romanovs, the Russian czar and his family took place in the Siberian town of Yekaterinburg. The events were so shrouded in mystery, and the victims so interesting (particularly the four beautiful daughters), that public interest in the story has never faded. Now, thanks to some remarkable espionage carried out in Russia during the final years of the Communist regime, and to some recently developed skills in forensic science, the final chapter on the Romanov saga will be written during the summer of 1998. If all goes according to plan, the Romanovs will be buried in the family sepulchre in St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The funeral service with appropriate imperial grandeur is scheduled for July 17 — 80 years to the day after their untimely deaths. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever seen a plant growing inside a cage? We saw such a sight at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Australia. It makes you stop and think doesn’t it? Is the cage there to protect the tree or to protect the people? Is this some sort of carnivorous threat or what? The little evergreen tree inside the cage is actually a very non-threatening 50 cm tall. The cage is there to prevent anyone from running off with the rarest known tree species on earth. The existence of this highly unusual tree, known as the Wollemi Pine, was just discovered in late 1994. Scientists are still dancing with delight. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever read The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl? It is such a fun story! Even grown ups laugh about this nasty scheming reptile who keeps devising new and ingenious ways to catch children for his supper. He describes his schemes as “secret plans and clever tricks.” Various jungle animals however foil each sneaky plan and the nasty croc eventually gets launched by an elephant into outer space. Read the rest of this entry »

The study of science really was a lot less complicated a generation or so ago. What we knew about the planets in our solar system, for example, was short and sweet. The planets basically had location, size and mass, rings or no rings, moons and names. That wasn’t too hard to learn. Since the advent of the space age however we have discovered a wealth of exciting new information. Every planet is different not only in appearance from all the other planets, but also in important physical characteristics. Three planets (Venus, Uranus and Pluto) spin in a backwards (retrograde) direction as do a few moons. In addition the axis of rotation for Uranus is tipped so steeply that it is basically spinning sideways. Moreover four gaseous planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all exhibit magnetic fields just as Earth does. The orientation of the field however with these giants is exactly opposite to that on earth. A compass on any of the four Jovian planets would point southward. Evidently the solar system is becoming more complicated with the launch of each additional probe. Read the rest of this entry »

As a rule, scientists seek answers. They want to answer the “why” questions. Why, for example, are plants green? Why is blood red? These are very simple queries compared to the biggies like why does quantum physics work. Nevertheless, believe it or not , we are as far from answering why chlorophyll is green, and blood cells are red, as we are from explaining quantum mechanics. Two commentators in fact recently termed the reason blood is red a “visual pun of molecular wit.” (Morrison and Morrison. 1998. Scientific American. March p. 106) The explanation for colour in chlorophyll is similarly obscure. The situation becomes even more interesting when we discover that chlorophyll and the heme component of hemoglobin are chemically extremely similar . Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever imagined yourself as a best selling author? Detective stories sell well. Let’s give it a try. My story is set in an imposing country home in England. The wealthy owner happens to wander into his wife’s dressing room. She is away on an expedition to the beach. The gentleman notices his wife’s diamond necklace carelessly flung onto the table amidst expensive perfume bottles. Horrified, he swoops down upon the jewelry, only to discover that this is a cheap imitation of the real necklace. Promptly he calls the local inspector who sends out four detectives. The detectives snoop around and each presents his theory on the case. Detective Smith declares that the butler stole the necklace and sold it in London. Detective Jones strongly suggests that his evidence implicates the maid. Detective Cooper accuses the daughter’s boyfriend of helping himself to the jewels. Detective Trent indicates that the evidence points to the son of the family who has wasted huge sums of money on fast cars. The gentleman is now thoroughly confused. When his wife returns home, he shares all these distressing details with her. It is then that his wife informs him that actually she lent the real necklace to her sister, Lady Hampton, who is scheduled to attend a royal court event that very evening. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever discovered something new, like a new recipe, a new and better way to carry out a task, or a new object in the sky? Whether you have invented a device which will make you rich, or whether you have identified a new phenomenon in nature, the joy of discovery is a reward in itself. When it comes to identifying new organisms, many people have turned their attention to the rain forest. New plants and new animals, often insects, are routinely described from that part of the world. Deep sea divers have also encountered some very strange creatures from the ocean depths. The sea between Denmark and Sweden, however has been fished for many centuries. We would not expect to find any new creatures in those cold waters, would we? Read the rest of this entry »

Several years ago I tried my hand at bird’s nest building. It wasn’t actually my idea to do this. As mother helper of the day, it was my job to assist the kindergarten class in their various projects. One of these was the nest building. We were provided with grass, feathers, wet mud and so one. What we didn’t have was know-how. One person held grass in a rough circle while another tried to daub on wet mud. What a mess we made! One thing we did learn was a profound respect for birds. How do they manage with only beaks, feet and wings? The birds obviously know what they are doing. Who told the birds how, what, where and when to build their nests? This is a very good question. Read the rest of this entry »

A tiny news item caught my eye: “Creature liberated from oilsands” (Edmonton Journal November 4, 2000 G1). Apparently a rare marine fossil was found earlier this year near Fort McMurray. The oilsands are making quite a name for themselves as a source of fossils. Besides unfossilized remains of trees, excavators have turned up nine marine reptiles, mostly plesiosaurs, from the oilsands. One of the earlier specimens, like the recent find, was identified as an ichthyosaur. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of us appreciate the word “young”, especially when it is used to describe us. However there is one class of individual that does not particularly like this adjective. These are astronomers. They don’t mind looking young themselves. However they do not want to hear about phenomena in space which appear recent or young. Many astronomers believe that our solar system is billions of years old. There should not be too many phenomena (or any) in space that are of very recent origin. Read the rest of this entry »

When I think about gardens, a happy little ditty comes into my mind.

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers
Especially in the month of June
You can learn a lot of things from the flowers
All on a golden afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems almost too amazing to contemplate. Measured from its antennae, Pioneer 10 extends less than 3 m (9 feet) and weighs about 270 kg (570 lb.). Its power comes from four nuclear generators each of which provided only 40 watts at launch, 29 years ago. Now that spacecraft is almost 12 billion km alway (7 billion miles). Despite the immense distance and the tiny onboard power source, a message from Pioneer 10 was successfully detected on April 28/01 by a tracking station in Spain. Some people might wonder how signals from Pioneer 10 are recognized from so far away. Apparently there is a new analytical technique based on chaos theory, which may enable scientists to sift real signals out of background noise. Read the rest of this entry »